Monday, April 30, 2012

There are definite signs in the air that 2012 will be an election year in Israel and, as a consequence, all manner of people are speaking up about a range of matters that will have an impact on election day.

Israel is, after all a vibrant democracy and in such circumstances it's not unknown for there to be disagreements between governments and former public servants who might have an eye on a political career so one has to take with a grain of salt articles such as that written by Jodi Rudoren (Ex-security chief attacks Israeli leaders over Iran) which appeared in today's Age, straight out of the New York Times.

Truth be known, we expect rigorous debate in a democracy and, although it's unlikely that the Age selected this article for publication to demonstrate this fact, I'm pleased that it disclosed to its readers that Yuval Diskin, who retired last year as the director of Shin Bet, that Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad spy agency, that the current head of the Israel Defence Forces, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz and that blogger Meir Javedanfar can all freely express their views on the Israeli government.

What I don't understand is why the Age never publishes anything about the other side of the coin in relation to this conflict.

Why we do we never hear about the anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny that pervades Hamas, the Palestine Authority, Hizbullah and Iran?

Why is the Age only waking up now to the hideous nature of the murderous Assad family in Syria?

Why has there not been a word written about the censorship of websites by the Palestine Authority and of the lies that are told about their banning?

Why has nothing been written about the divisions within the ranks of the Palestine Authority and the failure of the farcical unity talks between the PA and Hamas?

I guess all that will be forthcoming any day now but only if the journalist who writes the story can put an anti-Israel spin on it - otherwise, it all goes straight into the blank pages ...

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds to the nobel laureate's criticism and outlines the real threat to world peace: "The marriage of a militant Islamic regime with nuclear weapons." - Netanyahu – "Günter Grass has hurt us profoundly"

Welt am Sonntag: In a strange reversal of history Israelis today seem to be much less critical about Germany than Germans are towards Israel. Just take the issue of Günter Grass . His poem was rejected by most of the German media, but his words seem to have resonated more widely in the German public. How do you explain that?

Netanyahu: First of all I think what Grass says is an absolute outrage. That it comes from a German Nobel laureate and not from a teenager in a Neo-Nazi party makes it all the more outrageous. And it demands a very strong response. I think what Grass has said shows a collapse of moral clarity.He has created a perfect moral inversion where the aggressor becomes the victim and the victim becomes the aggressor. Where those who try to defend themselves against the threat of annihilation become the threat to world peace. And where the firefighter and not the arsonist is the real danger.Here is a simple fact that apparently has eluded Mister Grass: Israel doesn’t seek to destroy Iran, Iran seeks to destroy Israel and openly calls for it and works for it by building atomic bombs for that expressed purpose.What do we do with such statements? In every society you have extreme statements. A society is not judged by those statements but by how the leadership responds to them. And I think the fact that there was a broad condemnation by the leaders of Germany is important and positive. I am concerned that there is an undercurrent of support for this, at best it reflects a great ignorance on the facts that I have just put forward.

Welt am Sonntag: Would you call that way of thinking Anti-Semitic, the way Grass put it in words?

Netanyahu: There is something very deep there, because it’s not the normal criticism of Israel. Of course Israel is subject to criticism. Let me say this as the prime minister of Israel: I’d like to see an hour pass by, how about a minute pass by, without some criticism being voiced against Israel, not only outside Israel but inside Israel.This is an open society, criticism is our way of life. This is not the point. But this touches on the basic reversal of the truth. And coming from someone with Grass’ stature in Germany is very upsetting, very disconcerting. Now the question is: do people accept this or not?People have to respond to this. A lot of Jews ask themselves: ,If I had been in the Holocaust, how would I have acted? What would I have done? Would I have responded? Would I have organized to save ourselves?’ Every Jew asks himself this question.

Churchill once said, “In the time that it takes a lie to get halfway around the world, the truth is still getting its pants on.”

In the barren deserts of the Middle East, myths find fertile ground to grow wild. Facts often remain buried in the sand. The myths forged in our region travel abroad – and can surprisingly find their way into these halls.

I would like to use today’s debate as an opportunity to address just a few of the myths that have become a permanent hindrance to our discussion of the Middle East here at the United Nations.

Madame President,

Myth number one: the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the central conflict in the Middle East. If you solve that conflict, you solve all the other conflicts in the region.

Make no mistake: it is important for Israel and the Palestinians to resolve our longstanding conflict for its own merits. Yet, the truth is that conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, and many other parts of the Middle East have absolutely nothing to do with Israel.

It is obvious that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict won’t stop the persecution of minorities across the region, end the subjugation of women, or heal the sectarian divides. Obsessing over Israel has not stopped Assad’s tanks from flattening entire communities. On the contrary, it has only distracted attention from his crimes.

This debate – even this morning – has lost any sense of proportion. Thousands are being killed in Syria, hundreds in Yemen, dozens in Iraq — and yet, this debate again repeatedly is focusing on the legitimate actions of the government of the only democracy in the Middle East.

And dedicating the majority of this debate to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, month after month after after month, has not stopped the Iranian regime’s centrifuges from spinning. Iran’s ambitions for nuclear weapons are the single greatest threat to the Middle East, and the entire world.

The Iranian nuclear program continues to advance at the speed of an express train. The international community’s efforts to stop them are moving at the pace of the local train, pausing at every stop for some nations to get on and off. The danger of inaction is clear. We cannot allow the diplomatic channel to provide another avenue for the Iranian regime to stall for more time, as they inch closer and closer to a nuclear weapon.

Madame President,

Myth number two: there is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

In fact, numerous international organizations have said clearly that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the Deputy Head of the Red Cross Office in the area.

Gaza’s real GDP grew by more than 25 percent during the first three quarters of 2011. Exports are expanding. International humanitarian projects are moving forward at a rapid pace.

There is not a single civilian good that cannot enter Gaza today. Yet, as aid flows into the area, missiles fly out. This is the crisis in Gaza. And that is what keeps Gaza from realizing its real potential.

It is a simple equation. If it is calm in Israel, it will be calm in Gaza. But the people of Gaza will face hardship as long as terrorists use them as human shields to rain rockets down on Israeli cities.

Each rocket in Gaza is armed with a warhead capable of causing a political earthquake that would extend well beyond Israel’s borders. It will only take one rocket that lands in the wrong place at the wrong time to change the equation on the ground. If that happens, Israel’s leaders would be forced to respond in a completely different manner.

It is time for all in this Chamber to finally wake up to that dangerous reality. The Security Council has not condemned a single rocket attack from Gaza. History’s lessons are clear. Today’s silence is tomorrow’s tragedy.

Madame President,

Myth number three: settlements are the primary obstacle to peace.

How many times have we heard that argument in this chamber?

Just this month, the Human Rights Council proposed yet another “fact-finding” mission to Israel. It will explore…surprise, surprise…Israeli settlements.

Today, I’d like to save the Human Rights Council and the international community some time and energy.

The facts have already been found. They are plain for all to see.

The fact is that from 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza was part of Egypt. The Arab World did nothing – it did not lift a finger – to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel’s annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.

The fact is that in 2005, when I was the Director-General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, we took every settlement out of Gaza and only got rockets on our cities in return.

The fact is that this Israeli Government put in place an unprecedented ten-month moratorium on settlements. The Palestinian leadership used the gesture as an opportunity to take Israel and the international community on another ride to nowhere. For nine out of those ten months, they rejected the moratorium as insufficient – and then demanded that we extend it. As former U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell said “what had been less than worthless a few months earlier became indispensable to continue negotiations…[for the Palestinians]."

Madame President,

The primary obstacle to peace is not settlements. The primary obstacle to peace is the so-called “claim of return” – and the Palestinian’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

You will never hear Palestinian leaders say “two states for two peoples”. You won’t hear them say “two states for two peoples” because today the Palestinian leadership is calling for an independent Palestinian state, but insists that its people return to the Jewish state. This would mean the destruction of Israel.

Some of you might say, “Oh Ambassador, but the Palestinians know that they will have to give up this claim, that’s what they whisper quietly at the negotiating table.”

Ladies and Gentleman – the Palestinian leadership has never, ever said publicly that they will give up the so-called “claim of return” – neither to the Palestinian people, nor to the Arab World, nor to the international community, or to anyone else.

Since the Palestinian leadership refuses to tell the Palestinian people the truth, the international community has the responsibility and duty to tell them the truth. You have a duty to stand up and say that the so-called “claim of return” is a non-starter.

Instead of telling the Palestinian people the truth, much of the international community stands idle as the Arab World tries to erase the Jewish people’s historical connection to the Land of Israel.

Across the Arab World – and even at this table – you hear claims that Israel is “Judaizing Jerusalem”. These accusations come about 3,000 years too late. It’s like accusing the NBA of Americanizing basketball.

Like many nations around this table, the Jewish people have a proud legacy of age-old kings and queens. It’s just that our tradition goes back a few years earlier. Since King David laid the cornerstone for his palace in the 10th Century BC, Jerusalem has served as the heart of our faith.

In debate after debate, speakers sit in the Security Council and say that Israel is committing “ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem, even though the percentage of Arab residents in the city has grown from 26% to 35% since 1967.

The holiest sites in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, were closed only to Jews from 1948 until 1967. Everyone could come to these sites except Jews. There was absolutely no freedom of worship. The world did not say a word about the situation in Jerusalem at that time.

Since Israel unified the city, it has thrived under the values of tolerance and freedom. For the first time in centuries, sacred places that were once sealed off along religious lines are now permanently open for worship by all peoples. This is a principle grounded in our values, our actions and our laws.

Madame President,

There is another great truth that this organization has completely overlooked for the past 64 years.

In all of the pages that the UN has written about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, in all of its reports and fact-finding commissions, and in all of the hours dedicated to debate about the Middle East, there is one great untold story. Or – to be more specific – there are more than 850,000 untold stories.

More than 850,000 Jews have been uprooted from their homes in Arab countries during the past 64 years. These were vibrant communities dating back 2,500 years. On the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Babylonian Jewry produced many of Judaism’s holiest books — and thrived for two millennia. In the great synagogues and libraries of Cairo, Jews preserved the intellectual and scientific treasures of antiquity into the Renaissance. From Aleppo to Aden to Alexandria, Jews stood out as some of the greatest artists, musicians, businessmen, and writers.

All of these communities were wiped out. Age-old family businesses and properties were confiscated. Jewish quarters were destroyed. Pogroms left synagogues looted, graveyards desecrated and thousands dead.

The pages that the UN has written about the Palestinian refugees could fill up soccer stadiums, but not a drop of ink has been spilled about the Jewish refugees.

Out of over 1088 UN resolutions on the Middle East, you will not find a single syllable regarding the displacement of Jewish refugees. There have been more than 172 resolutions exclusively devoted to Palestinian refugees, but not one dedicated to Jewish refugees. The Palestinian refugees have their own UN agency, their own information program, and their own department within the United Nations. None exist for the Jewish refugees. The word “double-standard” does not even begin to describe this gap.

This discrepancy is very convenient for some in this Chamber, but it’s not right. The time has come for the UN to end its complicity in trying to erase the stories of 850,000 people from history.

The time has also come to speak openly in these halls about the Arab World’s role in maintaining the Palestinians as refugees for more than six decades.

Jews from Arab countries came to refugee camps in Israel, which eventually gave birth to thriving towns and cities. Refugee camps in Arab Countries gave birth to more Palestinian refugees.

Israel welcomed its Jewish refugees with citizenship and unlocked their vast potential. As they rose to the highest levels of society, our refugees lifted the State of Israel to new heights.

Imagine if Arab countries had done the same with their Palestinian refugees. Instead, they have cynically perpetuated their status as refugees, for generation after generation. Across the Arab World, Palestinians have been denied citizenship, rights and opportunities.

All of these are facts that must be neither forgotten nor overlooked, as we look to move forward on the path to peace.

Madame President,

I've saved the most obvious myth for last: the myth that peace can somehow be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians by bypassing direct negotiations. History has shown that peace and negotiations are inseparable.

Direct negotiations are the only tool, the only way and the only path to create two-states for two peoples. Last January, Israel offered a clear proposal in Amman for restarting direct negotiations. We presented the Palestinian delegation with negotiating positions on every major issue separating the parties.

That proposal – filled with Israel’s vision for peace – continues to gather dust, as Palestinian leaders continue to pile up new pre-conditions for sitting with Israel. They are everywhere except the negotiating table. It is time for them to give up unilateral efforts to internationalize the conflict and take up the real path to peace.

Madame President,

This week we will observe the two most significant public holidays in Israel – our day of remembrance and our day of independence.

On Wednesday, sirens will sound across Israel. For two minutes, everything will come to a halt. People will stop in their tracks, cars will pull over to the side of highways, and the entire country will pause to remember the more than 22,000 Israelis who have been killed by wars and terrorism in our nation’s short history.

On Thursday, we will celebrate the rebirth of the Jewish nation – and our 64thyear as a free people in our ancient homeland. Against persistent threats and overwhelming odds, Israel has not only survived, but thrived.

I walk the halls of this organization tall and proud of my extraordinary nation – a nation of just 7 million that has produced 10 Nobel prizes; a nation that sends satellites into space, puts electric cars on the road, and develops the technology to power everything from cell phones to solar panels to medical devices.

We intentionally commemorate these two days one after another. As the Israeli people celebrate our independence, we carry the heavy weight of great suffering and sacrifice.

The lesson we take from these days is clear. We can never turn a blind eye to the dangers around us. We cannot pretend that we live in a stable region filled with Jeffersonian democracies.

But there is another lesson that will fill the hearts of Israelis this week. We can never, ever give up hope for lasting peace. The price of conflict is too high. The evil of war is too great.

That is the fundamental truth which guides our leaders.

Madame President,

In the dangerous uncertainty of a turbulent Middle East, the Security Council has never had a greater responsibility to separate myth from truth, and fact from fiction.

The clarity of candor has never been more valuable. The need for honest discourse has never been clearer. It is time for this Council to sweep out the cobwebs of old illusions – and plant the seeds for a truly “open” debate on the Middle East. The challenges before us demand nothing less.

The Palestinian Authority has quietly instructed Internet providers to block access to news websites whose reporting is critical of President Mahmoud Abbas, according to senior government officials and data analyzed by network security experts.

Imagine what a certain daily broadsheet in Melbourne would be saying if it was Israel that was clamping down on the media in this way.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Monday, April 23, 2012

JERUSALEM - (AP) -- A Hamas leader said Thursday that if his militant group came to power in a future Palestinian state, it would not abide by any previous Palestinian peace deals with Israel.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Islamic militant group's number two figure, said any potential deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, even if ratified in a Palestinian referendum, would be considered only as a temporary truce.

"We will not recognize Israel as a state," he told the Jewish Daily Forward, a Jewish-American newspaper in an interview published Thursday. It was the first such interview by a senior Hamas leader to a Jewish publication. Israeli newspapers reported it on Friday.

Well that's it then. If Hamas in the process of forming a unity government with Mahmoud Abbas' Palestine Authority (yes, it is a slow process), we now can fully expect tomorrow's Age to fully explain to its readers that this means no credible Palestinian leadership accepts the concept of a full and lasting peace agreement with Israel. We can expect all of the pundits on the ABC, SBS, Crikey et all to now finally lay rest to the fiction that Israel is standing in the way of peace in this long lasting conflict.

As if they well ... and as if we haven't known about this for a long, long time.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

... the avoidance of Israel and all its ideas and wares has become a weird way of life for some people, where the aim isn’t to achieve tangible political goals but rather an inner sensation of super moral smugness.

Friday, April 20, 2012

THE strong reaction to the Gunter Grass poem illustrates the very point he makes, that it has become impossible to criticise Israel without being labelled anti-Semitic ("What must be said remains unspeakable", Opinion, 19/4). There is nothing anti-Semitic about proposing a nuclear-free Middle East, and there is nothing anti-Semitic about calling for an end to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

Tom Griffiths, Ascot Vale

Allow me to suggest that Mr. Griffiths most likely didn't even take the time to read or digest the excellent Op Ed What must be said remains unspeakable by Nick Dyrenfurth about which he is ostensibly commenting in his letter. Had he done so, he would have understood the difference between valid criticism and the racist anti-Jewish sentiment underpinning Gunther Grass' very ordinary piece of poetry and why Griffiths' own pithy little effort is so shameful.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

This is the one day in the year when we make a special effort to remember the Shoach - Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day - we remember the six million Jews and many others murdered by the Nazis.

This is a time for reflection; to remember the victims, to respect the dwindling number of survivors. A time also to wonder at the inhumanity of those who committed one of mankind's greatest atrocities.

Despite growing levels of hatred toward the Jewish people in some parts of the world, the day is marked by most with decency and respectfulness in this country.

A glaring exception has been on an obscure Adelaide radio station whose host Tim Brunero spoke to "journalist, author and blogger, Antony Loewenstein, to find out what this day means for the Jewish people."

Loewenstein?

Why not ask a Klansman what Martin Luther King Day means to the black people of the United States?

This is what Loewenstein's cousin Ronald Green posted to the station about the obscenity of discussing this day with such a person who had no qualms about using this solemn occasion as an opportunity to attack Israel, a haven for persecuted Jews everywhere, and the Jewish people:

I find it somewhat strange that of all people to represent the Jewish people, Radio Adelaide chose Antony Loewenstein, known for his extreme views on all things Jewish and his constant anti-Israel diatribes. Loewenstein, albeit the son of German Jews, has no background of Jewish history, ethics and practices, while, for reasons unknown, has made it his life's work to denigrate "the Jewish lobby" and Israel.I have some insight, since I am Loewenstein's cousin and hosted him inIsrael when he ostensibly "researched" his book. It was then that I became privy to his abysmal dearth of knowledge of history; not only of Jewish history, but of the Middle East and Islam. His bias was clear from the fact that he spent almost all of his time in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, interviewing local residents who justified his own already-formed opinions.For Radio Adelaide to have Loewenstein to talk about Yom HaShoah is not only a travesty, but is an insult to the memory of those to whom this day is dedicated.

Indeed, he already gets star-billing on a host of Judeophobic websites, which celebrate him as yet another upstanding and righteous critic of Israel, an honorable observer pilloried as an anti-Semite in order to suppress his heartfelt outcry.

Thus Grass becomes the ultimate robbed Cossack in a rationalized German adaptation of the infamous Russian tradition. Anti-Semites – whether they specialized in mere pogroms or outright Holocausts – habitually portrayed themselves as the aggrieved side.

Robbed Cossack Grass actually volunteered for the barbarous Waffen-SS (branded a “criminal organization” at the Nuremberg Trials). But what of it?

He has put it all behind him, wiped his own slate clean and now feels empowered to launch anti-Jewish diatribes at will. Professing to have propelled himself to a loftier leftist plane, he can reproach the Jews and, like Tolstoy before him, demand they do nothing to defend themselves.

If they do, they become, in Grass’s idiom, “the greatest danger to the world.” It’s Israel that threatens Iran and not vice versa. By his criteria, our forebears threatened Egypt’s pharaohs, the Amalekites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, Haman’s Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusader marauders, Muslim conquistadors, Spanish inquisitors, Chmielnicki’s Ukrainian mass-murderers, Russian pogromchiks, to say nothing of the Germans, whose fuehrer always screamed hysterically about the danger posed to the world by “the forces of International Judaism,” compelling him to formulate a “final solution” to their problem.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Ten years ago, when the Palestinian wave of terror known as the Second Intifada was at its height, the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin was the suicide bomber's capital of the world. When Israel finally decided to act against the murders of innocent men, women and children, launching Operation Defensive Shield, the British media went into a malevolent frenzy of hatred against the Jewish State.

The spearheads of these vicious attacks were the Guardian, The Independent and, of course, the BBC. Our own Melbourne Age was hardly any better. So-called "journalists" barred from the theatre of action picked up on lies by Palestinian spokespeople who falsely accused the IDF of a massacre of more than 500 civilians. When the truth came out that no more than a dozen Palestinian civilians died during the operation (some in buildings booby trapped by the terrorists), the Guardian, which had shamefully accused Israel of massacres and war crimes, even more shamefully failed to publish an apology for its disgracefully mendacious journalism.

This article by a Harry's Place contributor was submitted and rejected by the editors of the Guardian's Comment is Free which comes as no surprise at all given that even ten years after it demonstrated the journalistic ethics of the sewer, the Guardian still will not face up to the fact that one of its opinion writers can't see antiSemitism even when confronted with it face to face. The title to the article says it all -Jenin - Ten Years Since Something That Never Happened - A Learning Moment for The Guardian.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

As a result of the revelation, the nasties have come out of the woodwork.

The fall-out has been quite spectacular. I've been called everything from a Protestant to an agent of Mossad. Letters to the editor have been flying in since, like rockets from the Strip. But, unlike the rockets from Gaza, not all the letters have been sent with spleen.

Leading figures of the British stage have strongly denounced calls for Israel's national theatre company, Habima, to be removed from the line-up of the Globe to Globe Shakespeare Festival for political reasons.

Playwright Sir Arnold Wesker, and actors Steven Berkoff and Maureen Lipman, have suggested that the attempt to block Israeli actors from performing The Merchant of Venice for the Cultural Olympiad is tantamount to Nazi-era book-burning.

Which fits in with my understanding of the haters who are urging on this disgraceful boycott.

A Saudi human rights group voiced alarm on Tuesday about the health of one of its members, who has been on hunger strike for almost a month and who stopped drinking water at the weekend.

The Melbourne Age which is so concerned about bringing to the attention of its readers the stories of suspected Palestinian terrorists on hunger strikes will no doubt take up his cause with a concerted attack on the Saudi legal system ... any day now ... I'm sure.

"When I visited the then-mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, about 30 years ago, he happily boasted that about three quarters of the population of his town, the birthplace of Christianity, was Christian. Today, after a reign of terror which included land theft, intimidation and beatings by recently arrived Islamic extremists, the figure is estimated to be down to 10 per cent. The Christians of Bethlehem, under pressure from the new Muslim majority, are quietly finding new homes wherever émigrés are permitted safer havens.

"Bethlehem is a microcosm of a phenomenon that is evident throughout the Palestinian territories. Against a drumbeat of harassment, which has included calls by Muslim extremists to slaughter their Christian neighbours, half of the Palestinian Christians of Gaza have fled their homes since the Hamas putsch in 2007. In the West Bank, Christians, who once accounted for 15 per cent of the population, are now down to less than 2 per cent.

"It should be noted that since the establishment of Israel — the only state in the region to guarantee freedom of worship to all faiths and the only state to have outlawed racism — the Arab Christian population has increased by an estimated 2,000 per cent.

"Never mind the ‘Israeli apartheid’ myths that flourish on Britain’s university campuses. What intrigues me is why Britain’s political and media classes, normally so sensitive to humanitarian issues, turn away in the face of the very real apartheid-style oppression that persists in the Arab world; why they remain silent as Christians are persecuted and the UN Human Rights Council, which last month endorsed the human rights record of Libya’s late Muammar Gaddafi, peddles its bizarre nonsense."

Monday, April 09, 2012

The usual collection of British Israel bashers in the world of the arts is out and about enabling the racist BDS movement, this time railing against an invitation by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London to invite Israel's National Theatre, Habima, to perform The Merchant of Venice at the Festival this May - Dismay at Globe invitation to Israeli theatre .

The boycotters comprise some real nasties including Caryl Churchill, a playwright best known for his seven minute antiSemitic rant "Seven Jewish Children", has beens Alexei Sayle and Emma Thompson and never was Miriam Margolyes, better known for telling fart jokes to Graham Norton.

In today's Australian (Letter from the Heart) Howard Jacobson strikes back at this hateful scourge:-

"an equally passionate counter-attack. Jacobson, winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize for his comic novel The Finkler Question, about what it means to be Jewish, said artistic critics were wrong. Writing for the Observer, below,he said: "If there is one justification for art... it is that it proceeds from, and addresses, our unaligned humanity. Whoever would go to art with a mind made up on any subject misses the point of what art is for."

Would someone please remind me if and when one of the signatories is next due to appear at the Globe (shouldn't they be boycotting it now) to write a letter to the Guardian demanding to know why the Globe is allowing antiSemites to appear on its stage?

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Every year at Christmas and at Easter, the Age regales us with stories about how tough life is for the Christians living in Israel and the Palestinian territories because of the occupation. This year was no different with Ruth Pollard's offering - Pilgrims rent a cross to walk in Christ's footsteps - weaving the now familiar narrative without checking the facts let alone delving into why the checkpoints and the bureacracy exist or letting her readers know that when the Old City was administered by Jordan, Jews were given no access to its holy sites at all.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

"We must make clear to the world that David in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to David in the Quran, Solomon in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to Solomon in the Quran, and neither is Saul or Joshua son of Nun [of the Bible]... This is our logic and this is our culture." [PA TV (Fatah), Feb. 15, 2012]

Sunday, April 01, 2012

The latest Palestinian publicity stunt in the war of hatred against Israel was last Friday's Million Man Global March on Jerusalem organised by the usual suspects included racist BDS liar Mustafa Barghoti. The mad march coincided with Palestinian Land Day.

They thought they might get millions marching on Jerusalem but they managed a minute fraction of that. The world yawned as these idiots tried damn hard to attract attention around the world but the world is getting bored with their antics.

Protesters at the Qalandiyah checkpoint hurled rocks at soldiers, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas;

more people participated in the Tel-Aviv marathon than were rioters at Israel's borders;

there were also clashes in Qalandiyah between various Palestinian factions. Mustafa Barghouti was injured and the ambulance that evicted him was stoned by Fateh supporters. True to form, Barghouti tried to blame the IDF but pro-Palestinian sources called him on this and the fact that he tried to suppress the news of the deceit (don't worry Mustafa, the Age won't publish the stroty anyway;

These Palestinian stunts would be amusing if not for the fact that they are fuelled by blatant antiSemitism. The above picture comes from the Facebook Page of the Global March to Jerusalem - Australian National Committee (hat tip: elderofziyon). Of course, even the suggestion in the picture that Israel is depriving the Gazans of electricity is bogus because Hamas itself has orchestrated the power shortages for its own profit.